ARMA PUERUMQUE CANO
In the warfare that raged through the neighborhood it invariably fell
on Ed Mason and me to support lost causes.
As the two smallest, we were told off to represent the English at
Bunker Hill. It was a revised and thoroughly patriotic Bunker Hill, for
the English never reached the top, but had to retreat under a galling
fire of green apples.
As Confederates, we dashed boldly but ineffectually across the valley
at Gettysburg.
When the honor of the Old Guard at Waterloo was in our keeping, we did
not die, but we did surrender ignominiously, and were locked up in a
box-stall in Peter Bailey's father's stable.
After that, the allied forces, consisting of Peter, Rob Currier, Joe
and Charley Carter, and Horace Winslow, basely withdrew to inspect
Auntie Merrill's pears (which were nearly ripe) and left us Napoleonic
veterans to wither in captivity.
It was not only in struggles among ourselves that we had to drink of
the bitter cup of defeat. When we banded together against the common
enemy, things were not much better. Take, for instance, the time
when Peter Bailey decided to turn the stable into a police station.
The stalls suggested cells (there were no horses kept in them), and
the success with which the Old Guard had been imprisoned after their
crushing defeat at Waterloo, showed the desirability of more captives.
At first things took their usual course. Ed Mason and I were informed
that we were a gang of cutthroats, burglars, highway robbers,
pickpockets, counterfeiters, and other kinds of ruffians, and bade to
sneak about the streets. We were warned not to run too fast when the
police approached to arrest us, and told that it was "no fair" to make
any determined resistance.
When Peter Bailey, Rob Currier, and the others dashed out of the
stable, clad (in their own estimation) in blue coats and brass buttons,
we were to submit to arrest _ad libitum_.
But after we had been dragged in and confined in cells a dozen or
twenty times, it began to pall, even on the policemen.
It had long ago become sickeningly familiar to us.
To give the thing variety, new victims must be found. We were weary
of the business and had ceased to feel any terror at the prospect of
confinement. We never served terms longer than thirty seconds, for we
had to be released immediately in order to be arrested once more. With
only two criminals in the world, the policeman's lot became a tedious
one. Both prisoners and police felt that unless something happened the
stable could no longer a prison make, nor wooden stalls a cage.
Peter proposed to reform the whole thing. He boldly suggested that
we go outside our own circles and arrest the Irish boys,--those who
went in the winter to the parochial school. It would have to be done
with all the majesty of the law, and that required a billy for each
policeman.
These were duly made out of broomsticks. With great pains a hole was
burned through the top of each with a red-hot poker. Then a cord was
passed through the hole, so the billy might be dangled and swung.
We were now ready for the prisoners, and our first campaign was all
that the heart could wish. We waylaid a group of boys, and, without
much struggle, soon had a prisoner in each cell. After a little we let
them go.
They hurried off, remarking that they would get even with us.
These wholesale arrests were continued for two or three days, and all
went happily. It was not until a week afterward that the reckoning
came. Then a crowd of the outraged prisoners found Ed Mason and me
alone, fell upon us, and beat us full sore. Without the whole force of
police our authority had waned, and once again it became apparent that
humiliation was ever our fortune in feats of arms.
It was this last straw that led to our singular revolt on the day of
the famous cowboy and Indian raid. We outraged all the proprieties,
turned against the white man, and showed a criminal disregard for the
cause of civilization. But for once victory rested with us. We plucked
success out of failure, and found that it was good. When we had it,
we declined to let it go. Force of arms had decided the issue, and we
accepted its arbitrament. Argument could not move us. The worm turned,
and the turning of him was terrible.
A hot and languorous day in August saw the great battle of redskins and
palefaces. Nothing in the weather stirred us to mighty deeds. The long
afternoon had dragged on to half-past four. For two hours we had roamed
the street, the gardens, and back yards. A dulness settled over things.
The ph[oe]be-bird who sat on Mr. Hawkins's woodshed reiterated his
dismal note, as though the weariness of the dog-days had entered his
very soul.
"Phe-e-e--be-e-e-e," he remarked, with that falling inflection on the
last syllable that would dampen the spirits of a circus clown.
"Phe-e-e--be-e-e."
Mr. Hawkins himself leaned over his gate and smoked his pipe.
An ice-cart came lumbering down the street. That, at least, was
interesting. We hurried to meet it, and each possessed himself of a
lump of ice. Then we perched, some on my fence and some on the blue box
that held the garden hose. We removed the straw and sawdust from the
ice, and began to suck it.
Mr. Hawkins, having taken his clay pipe from his mouth, engaged in a
conversation with the driver of the ice-cart on the prospects of rain.
We watched them languidly. They debated the question at length, until
the dripping water from the ice-cart had formed three dark spots in the
dusty street.
Peter Bailey said: "Let's go up to Davenport's and see if the raft is
there."
Davenport's was a general term used to describe a field, and a pond in
that field. The pond was a small affair, with no large amount of water,
but a great deal of black mud. It was not without certain tremendous
fascinations, however, for we believed that in one place it had no
bottom.
Moreover, leeches abounded.
Few, if any of us, had ever seen a leech; but we were aware that if one
of them attached himself to the human body, no power under Heaven could
drag him off, and he would not stop his infernal work until he had
drained away every drop of blood.
Ed Mason and I had other reasons than the leeches for not wanting to
experiment with the raft at Davenport's. Only a week before we had been
capsized from that raft. We had not found the bottomless spot, nor been
attacked by leeches; but we had crawled ashore in such a condition
of muddiness that our reception at our respective homes had been
depressing. Davenport's could get along without us for a while.
Peter's suggestion fell flat. Just then Charley Carter caught sight of
a spare piece of clothes-line in my side yard. He ran and seized it,
shouting "Lassos!"
It was a happy idea. The boundless West, the prairies, herds of
buffaloes, roving Indians, cowboys--these were the visions that excited
us in an instant, especially the cowboys.
What a life is theirs--to gallop forever with cracking revolvers and
whirling lassos; to capture the mighty buffalo, and bring down the
hated Indian!
Why should we not do that?
Mr. Hawkins, next door, might continue to smoke his pipe to the
monotonous song of the ph[oe]be. For us, the career of danger far
beyond the Mississippi; the life that knows no fear on the wind-swept
prairie!
A lack of any more rope in my yard, and my firm refusal to have the
clothes-lines cut down entire, made us depart to Bailey's stable, where
desperate enterprises were set on foot.
We made the lassos and drew upon our armory for wooden revolvers. These
are thoroughly satisfactory weapons if you wave them in the air and
shout "Bang!" at frequent intervals.
But immediately Peter Bailey's genius for military organization
asserted itself. He and Rob Currier, the two Carters, and Horace
Winslow would be the cowboys. The hostile Indians must be impersonated,
of course, by Ed Mason and myself. What was the sense of having cowboys
without Indians for them to destroy?
So we should have no lassos, nor yet revolvers, but only tomahawks.
Right here I drew the line.
Ed backed me up, and we announced our ultimatum. Indians we would be,
and lassoless we would go, but to ask us to refrain from carrying
revolvers was demanding too much. We stuck out for revolvers, and
intimated that a refusal would cause us to withdraw from all operations
that afternoon.
So the concession was made.
Even then we knew that the adventure could end in only one fashion.
We should be chased, hunted down, shot, lassoed, scalped, and finally
burned at the stake, during an imposing war-dance; for these cowboys
were fully enamored of Indian methods of warfare when turned against
the Indians themselves.
We were to belong to a dangerous tribe, recently discovered by Peter
Bailey, and called _Sigh-ux_. We agreed to start on our barbaric career
from the stable. From there to the street corner we should have full
license to pillage and destroy. In order to give the avenging cowboys
due provocation, we were to commit certain outrages on the way. These
might include burning down the Universalist Church on the corner and
ringing the door-bell at Miss Whipple's private school.
Once we had turned into Oak Street, where I lived, we would have to
look to our safety. The cowboys would be on our track.
So off we went.
In a few moments, ignited by shots from our revolvers, the Universalist
Church was wrapped in flames. We rang Miss Whipple's door-bell, and,
as an additional atrocity, threatened her cat with tomahawks. Then we
turned up Oak Street, and knew in a moment, by the yells that arose,
that the cowboys had burst out of their encampment and were after us.
I suppose Ed shared my feelings of despair as we ran up the street. The
youngest cowboy was two years older than either of us; they were all
swifter runners, and they outnumbered us by three. In a few moments it
would all be over. Our brief season of bloodshed and destruction was
past, and it now only remained for us to be slaughtered at the cowboys'
will.
It was so tiresome!
Our defeats at Bunker Hill, at Gettysburg, at Waterloo, and on
countless other stricken fields recurred to us as we panted along. If
we could only turn the tables in some way!
Instinctively we hurried toward the side yard of my house, climbed the
fence, and tumbled over. We landed on the blue box that held the garden
hose. The cowboys were approaching rapidly, with loud cries and much
banging of revolvers. Already Horace Winslow was shouting that he had
shot me five times, and that I must fall dead instantly. In a moment,
we knew, they would be over the fence after us.
Moved by the same thought, we opened the blue box. The hose was
connected with the tap at the side of the house. Ed turned the tap,
while I, standing on the edge of the box and looking over the fence
into the street, swept the road with a stream of cold water.
Horace stopped abruptly in his rush toward the fence, and Joe Carter,
who had halted about thirty feet away to pour a volley of bullets after
us, executed a swift movement to the rear.
The others paused where they were. Tomahawks, scalping-knives, spears,
and revolvers--none of these would have checked the bold cowboys for a
moment; but this stream of water was another matter.
It does not do for any cowboy, however desperate, to go home to his
parents with his clothes soaking wet. Such events often mean an
enforced retirement for a day from the field of glory.
"Whatcher doing?" screamed Peter Bailey. "That ain't fair!"
We felt that he was right. This garden hose suddenly springing out of
the Western prairie was a false note. Artistically it jarred. It was
like bringing a school-teacher into fairyland.
But we did not stop the stream. For once we saw the militant Peter,
his fearless lieutenant, Rob Currier, and all the rest of the ever
victorious army held in check. No feeling that we were violating the
fitness of things could detract from the sweetness of the moment. If
eternal defeat had not embittered us in the past, we might have been
more artistic and less human on this occasion. But in an instant, and
as by direct intervention of the gods, our retreat had been turned into
triumph, and that we did not intend to relinquish.
Woe, woe, to the vanquished!
"Aw, that's a _great_ thing to do!" sneered Rob Currier.
"You _can't_ do it!" shouted Joe Carter in a state of great excitement;
"Indians don't have hose!"
"That's all right," I replied, "these Indians have got some. They got
it from a settler's cabin, or--or--or _somehow_. Anyhow, they've got
it."
"But 'tain't fair," reiterated Peter Bailey.
"'Tain't fair for five of you to be always masserkerin' us," remarked
my fellow Indian.
Peter was disposed to bitterness. He did not enjoy having his military
plans frustrated in such a manner.
"You're only a couple of babies,--you're afraid to be masserkered," he
said.
Naturally, the babies invited him to come right on and do his
massacring.
"I will, if you'll turn off that hose,--I don't want to get all wet."
"Course we won't turn it off, an' if you're afraid to come, why, you're
beaten, an' you must surrender, an' be tomahawked, an' burned at the
stake, an' have blazin' pine splinters stuck in your flesh. Will you do
it?"
They firmly declined to become parties to any such attractive
proceedings.
"Come on," said Joe Carter; "let 'em stay there and play with the hose.
They don't know how to be Indians, anyway. We'll go back to the barn,
and lasso buffaloes."
"Come on," said Peter, and the whole band of cowboys departed.
Then the victorious Indians, the two triumphant _Sigh-ux_, danced a
short war-dance, and whooped two or three war-whoops,--so loud that Mr.
Hawkins opened his gate, and came out to the sidewalk to see what was
the matter.